Interest in sanctions against Russia is waning – what is the State Financial Monitoring Service’s fault?

From June 15 to 19, the latest meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was held in Paris. The State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine, which is responsible for cooperation with the FATF in Ukraine, again failed to achieve significant results, so no new decisions were made to restrict the aggressor country.

Due to the passive stance of our relevant agency, the issue of financial threats and terrorist financing emanating from Russia went unaddressed by the international meeting participants. “The suspension of the Russian Federation’s membership in the FATF remains in effect,” the international organization noted in its final communiqué following the meeting.

But this is a decision that has already been in effect for three years. This time, member countries did not issue a separate public statement condemning the aggressor’s actions, as they had regularly done in previous years. There was no new FATF statement condemning Russia.

For Ukraine, the FATF meeting is a good opportunity to increase pressure on the aggressor country. However, due to the inaction of the State Financial Monitoring Service, the issue of risks and threats posed by Russia was not a focus of the latest FATF meeting. This was also the case at previous meetings in 2025 in Paris and Strasbourg, as well as in February 2026 in Mexico City. As a result, international partners’ interest in imposing sanctions on Russia is gradually waning. However, adding the aggressor country to the FATF blacklist could significantly hamper its financial ability to wage war.

This inaction may be due to searches conducted by NABU and SAPO at the State Financial Monitoring Service ahead of the international meetings. The investigation took place on June 10 and is related to a case involving the laundering of UAH 200 million during the construction of fortifications in the Donetsk region, which is being investigated by NABU. Suspicion has fallen on the former heads of the Poltava Regional Police Department, Filip Pronin and Bohdan Korolchuk, who now head the State Financial Monitoring Service. Pronin is the head of the State Financial Monitoring Service, and Korolchuk is his first deputy. Internal financial fraud within the agency negatively impacts the state’s reputation and complicates dialogue with international partners.

MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak reported the possible involvement of Pylyp Pronin and Bohdan Korolchuk in the theft. Specifically, in 2024, the OBA’s construction department signed 16 contracts totaling over 370 million hryvnias with just one company, Enki Construction LLC. The fortifications built with these funds did not meet the necessary requirements. Furthermore, after the contracts were signed, the cost of the work increased several times. Specifically, Enki Construction purchased materials indirectly, through its intermediary company, Premium Active.

But according to Zheleznyak, the largest amount of money was laundered through the creation of fictitious services. Specifically, various payments were framed as payments for goods, security services, consulting, or software development. In October 2025, during searches as part of an investigation into financial fraud during the construction of fortifications in the Poltava region, NABU detectives seized over $278,000, over 3.3 million hryvnias, as well as documents, seals, and registration data of dozens of Ukrainian and foreign companies from an office in Kyiv.

Between 2024 and 2026, these funds were transferred between the accounts of these companies as payment for similar services, but the actual purpose of these transactions raises questions for the investigation. Some of these companies are registered in Cyprus, the Czech Republic, and the British Virgin Islands—jurisdictions often used to conceal the ultimate owners of businesses.

European Solidarity also demanded the dismissal of State Financial Monitoring Director Filip Pronin and Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba, who, according to the political party, are involved in anti-corruption investigations .

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